


Clad in Moonlight

by Masu_Trout



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It of Sorts, Guilt, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Not After Years Compliant, Playing the Reverse Blame Game, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 16:03:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8997520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: In which flowers bloom, brothers argue, and there's no time like the present for poking old wounds.(Kain and Golbez fumble their way towards something approaching forgiveness.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaclynhyde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaclynhyde/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy this.

Strange, to be here at the end. 

Kain had spent so long serving under Golbez, fueled by a hatred that seeped into his very soul like the vilest of poisons and doing his best to destroy everything his true self held dear. Even after the curse finally broke, he'd expected, well—to be executed, perhaps, or imprisoned for his crimes. Certainly he hadn't imagined _this_ : fighting alongside Cecil and Rosa and their battle-forged companions with Golbez himself watching Kain's back, striking at a phantom made from malice and greed until it finally dissolved into light.

The victory left him left him shaking with exertion, triumphant and yet strangely terrified. He'd never felt so connected during a battle before; it was as if the very planet itself had reached out to urge them on.

People would be calling them heroes for this, he realized. The very thought sent a shiver down his spine. The other four richly deserved it. They would wear the title well. Him, though… when the people spoke of the warriors who defeated the Giant of Babil's master, would they also remember that one of those same warriors had helped bring that monster into being in the first place?

Kain didn't think he could bear being forgiven. Every word Fusoya spoke about _the strength of the light_ and the _evil in men's hearts_ made him want to curl up further into his armor.

Cecil had the sword and the heart of a paladin. Rosa's goodness and strength echoed in every spark of her magic. Rydia, the girl he'd helped orphan, was now a woman in her own right and a powerful summoner besides. And Edge—for all his occasional childishness—would undoubtedly become an honorable ruler.

Kain was still wearing the armor he'd slaughtered a village in. He'd betrayed his closest friends ( _again_ ) only days before. All considered, he made a better match with the archfiends than he did with these four.

When Golbez stepped forward, his armor a dark mass against the Lunar Subterrane's mirrored floors, Kain's first foolish thought was _don't leave me_.

He curled his hands into fists at his sides and kept his mouth shut. It wasn't his place to object; besides, Golbez's choice was a wise one. Better for the people not to have to face their tormentor again, better that they be allowed to recover and rebuild in peace. 

They'd been two dogs at the end of the same master's lead. That sort of connection was nothing to form a bond over.

Fusoya welcomed Golbez to the Crystal Palace. Golbez nodded, ready to join their sleep. To leave all of humanity behind.

And Cecil stepped forward and said, firmly, “ _No._ ”

–

It took about five days of arguing and an emergency meditation session with the crystals for a decision to be reached. To Kain's surprise, the only one actually arguing _against_ Golbez returning to Earth was Golbez—or Theodor now, he supposed—himself. Kain wasn't sure whether Theodor's battle against Zemus had won him a level of admiration or whether everyone was just fascinated by the idea of Cecil's brother, but even Rydia and Edge seemed to want him to come back with them. Fusoya was more neutral, a mediator rather than an active participant, and Theodor… 

Well, Kain was beginning to suspect Theodor might just try to force himself into hibernation all on his own and circumvent the discussion entirely. Cecil's stubborn streak only occasionally came out to play, but it was all the more fearsome for its rarity.

“I think Golbez is going to storm out again,” Rydia said. “It sounds like Fusoya's joined the discussion.”

Edge scowled. “I should have started a betting pool. I could be raking in the coin right now.”

Kain took a sip from his drink—a strange tea unlike any he'd tasted before, brewed from a plant brought over from the Lunarian homeworld—and pretended not to hear either of them. The strange crystal rooms here echoed and amplified even the slightest sound, making it impossible to have a truly private conversation. He had resolved to tune out the discussion as much as possible; it was none of his business now, and he didn't want to interfere in Cecil's life any further than he already had. Certain others, however, were rather less scrupulous.

True to Rydia's prediction, Theodor came stalking out of the discussion room only a few moments later. 

He no longer rattled with every step he took—he'd taken off the heavy armor and replaced it with simple cloth and beaded bracelets—but his presence would never be something Kain could ignore. His lips twisted in a solemn frown and his whole body was tensed like a bow bent to snapping. Theodor spared the three of them only the briefest of glances before his gaze darted back to the floor and he disappeared down a corridor.

“Huh,” Edge said into the silence left by his passing, “he doesn't resemble Cecil all that much, does he?” He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Scary.”

Rydia frowned. “…He's a lot like Cecil was when I first met him.”

Kain tensed, braced for whatever she might say next. Hard to remember, sometimes, that this lively and even-keeled summoner was the same terrified child who they'd found sobbing in the ruins of her village. 

Instead of anger, though, Rydia's voice was full of sorrow. “I hope he'll let us help him. He needs… time, I think, and people to talk to. This sort of pain isn't one you can sleep through.”

“ _Is_ there a kind of pain you can sleep through?” Edge asked. “Because I remember breaking my ribs once a few years back, and I did _not_ sleep well for weeks after—”

“You're such a baby.” Rydia snorted. “I had my arm broken by a behemoth when I was seventeen, but I don't spend my time complaining about how much it hurt.”

“Ribs and arms are two entirely different levels of pain—”

The conversation was friendly, familiar, and Kain suddenly found he couldn't bear to listen to it. He stood abruptly, drawing both Edge and Rydia's attention, and said a quick “pardon me” before following Theodor down the hall.

It made his stomach churn to know he was following the man still. But his mind wrapped around again and again to Rydia's words: _he needs people to talk to_. 

It was idiocy to believe he might be one of those people, that Golbez's loyal crony could have anything to say to the man he'd become. But if he didn't try… 

If he didn't try, and Theodor gave up his planet and his family for never-ending sleep as a result, he wouldn't be able to forgive himself. It was as simple as that.

Now, if only Kain knew what to actually _say_.

–

Finding Theodor was easy enough—he'd only gone as far as one of the larger crystal gardens. He was looking down from an upper balcony at a plot of dark-leaved plants growing in the thin moonlight, one hand propping up his chin and the other dangling over the railing.

Kain hung back and watched. He'd often wondered what Golbez might look like under the mask, but he'd certainly never imagined this.

In many ways, the brothers had little in common. His build was a direct opposite to Cecil's: where his brother was thin and wiry, Theodor was pure muscle and intimidating height. His skin was several shades darker than Cecil's moon-pale tone and his expressions were all the subtler when compared to Cecil's open book of a face. Still, no one who watched them for long would be able to deny they were related. It was in their perfectly-matched eyes, their long white hair, and the barely-there smile each of them wore when they thought no one was watching. 

Right now, his eyes fixed on the plants, that small smile was plain Theodor's face. Kain hesitated a moment longer to catalogue each tiny detail of it before finally stepping forward.

Theodor startled, drawing backwards, and the smile disappeared. “Kain.”

“M'Lo—” Kain started, then bit down on the rest of the word. “That is, I mean…” He stopped, sucked in a breath. “Theodor. Is it okay if I stand by you a while?”

His cheeks flushed with embarrassment. He hadn't meant for the old honorific to slip from his lips so easily.

Theodor hesitated a long moment before nodding and gesturing to the space next to him. “Please.”

Kain settled uneasily next to Theodor, close enough to be companionable but far enough that there was a safe sliver of distance between them. He felt vulnerable without his armor and lance.

With a sigh, Theodor turned his attention back to the garden. “My brother is a stubborn man.”

“He always has been.” Kain couldn't help but smile. “You should have seen him as a child—he loved to argue about honor and justice with men twice his age. Sometimes he even won.” 

Kain wasn't half as eloquent, but he'd always made sure to hang around just in case the argument turned physical. Fistfights were something he could help Cecil win.

“Yes,” Theodor said quietly, “I should have.”

The silence stretched out between them. Once again, Kain found himself wishing he could force his words back into his mouth.

Finally, Theodor shifted sideways to face Kain, his body half-hanging over the railing. That pale white hair of his fell in a curtain across his face, hiding his eyes from view. Kain wanted suddenly to brush it away, or perhaps to offer him a tie. Long hair could be frustrating to deal with when you were used to holding it all under a helmet.

“He keeps speaking of redemption,” Theodor said. His voice was thick with barely-restrained emotion. “Every time I remind him of all I have done, he merely says that one cannot atone for their sins by running away.”

“Perhaps I shouldn't tell him that I intend to seclude myself on Mount Ordeals the moment we touch ground, then,” Kain said. It was only half a joke, but it worked better than he'd expected: for a brief, startling moment, Theodor actually _laughed_.

He remembered Golbez laughing occasionally, a deep booming skin-crawling sound, always in front of others and only ever for effect. This soft little noise was so different that he could barely believe it came from the same man.

“Tell me, have you ever found a way to make him reconsider his convictions?”

Kain thought for a moment. “Sometimes, when we were younger, I would stick my foot out while we were walking and trip him. He would have to go to Rosa so she could stop the bleeding, and if he was set on doing something particularly stupid she might be able to talk him out of it. He's not as clumsy these days, though, and anyhow I think Rosa is on his side here, so… I'm afraid I don't have any useful advice.” It took all of his courage and then some, but he managed to smile slightly at Theodor as he spoke.

Theodor's answering smile was brief but genuine. For a while they both were quiet, the silence broken only by Theodor drumming his fingers arrhythmically against the railing. 

“I cannot…” Theodor started. His face had become closed-off and his white-knuckled hands held fast to the railing. “I cannot truly argue with my brother, because I know he has the right of it—leaving with Fusoya means running away. But how can I _not_? How can I face my home after everything I have done to defile it?”

Kain had to resist the urge to laugh out of sheer incredulity. “I'm afraid I'm not the man to ask about finding redemption.” He knew his smile must look bitter and twisted, but he couldn't keep it from his face. 

Looking at it rationally, he was certainly the worse of the two of them: Theodor had been corrupted as a child, alone in the world and with no defenses against Zemus' creeping evil. Kain had his friends, his position in the Dragoons, and his country… and yet he'd still fallen at Golbez's feet with just the slightest touch of that power.

“Ah,” Theodor said, “and here I am, complaining about forgiveness to one of the people I harmed the most.”

“You did not—” Kain sputtered. “I was the victim of nothing but my own pride.”

Theodor frowned. “I am not an amnesiac, Kain.”

“You offered me power and glory. I was happy enough to trade away my soul in return.”

“I _used_ you.” Theodor's fingers twitched, as if he meant to reach out, before going still once more. His voice was heavy with a deep self-loathing. “I twisted you and tortured you—I remember the touch of my magic on your mind.”

Kain remembered it too: the intoxicating glory of it, the way it pushed away the horror and the guilt until he could stand in a room full of monsters and plot the destruction of his oldest friends without feeling any remorse at all. More times than he could (or wanted to) count, he'd gone grovelling to Golbez for another small taste of that power. 

“I am no innocent here,” he said. “I was conscious of all I did.”

“If someone came up to you now and offered you riches and power in exchange for slaughtering Cecil, would you agree?”

Kain snarled. “Of course not!”

Theodor just looked at him, saying nothing, until finally Kain understood. He'd walked right into that one, hadn't he?

“Well,” Kain said, “I notice you're not murdering Cecil at the moment either. I can't imagine why that might be.”

“There is an immense gulf between your suffering and the atrocities I committed under Zemus. It would be unreasonable even to attempt to compare the two.”

“And what might those vast differences be?”

Theodor gritted his teeth. “As I said, I have not forgotten my past. I remember when we first met: you were alone, afraid, stripped of your rank and your dearest friends. You came limping home to Baron, faith shaken, only for the man you loved like a father to berate you—on my orders—for still having compassion in your heart.” A shiver of some unidentifiable emotion ran down Kain's spine as Theodor's voice turned soft. “There was little I could _not_ have done to a man as frightened and miserable as you.” 

The memory of that exact moment was still blurry, but Kain could recall brief flashes of it: Golbez's hand a solid weight, first against his shoulders and then around his throat; the smoothness of his voice as he whispered into Kain's ear that Rosa had left him as well; the way he'd gently bushed Kain's tears from his cheeks when he finally broke down and wept. Kain had come to heel like a beaten dog, half-feral and desperate for any master to follow.

Very deliberately, Kain closed his eyes and forced the memories away. Now was not the time to dwell on such things.

“Lonely,” he said, “frightened, missing the ones you love, afraid of those you once trusted… It sounds like a story I've heard once before. Or does an orphan child with the world against him and an infant brother to care for not feel any of those things?”

The surprise on Theodor's face was immensely satisfying, if rather difficult to appreciate through the fringe of hair still falling into his eyes. Kain suddenly found that it bothered him. He wanted to see Theodor's expressions properly, not to have to constantly peer through that curtain just to catch a glimpse of his eyes. Without even thinking about it, he reached out to brush Theodor's bangs away.

Both of them froze when Theodor made a quiet noise—more a sigh than anything else—and pressed into Kain's quick touch with all the desperation of a starving man. It was obvious that sheer instinct had driven him to it; now that the hair was out of the way, he could easily catch the flash of embarrassment that burned in his eyes.

Kain didn't pull his hand away. Instead, he slid it sideways until he was cupping Theodor's cheek and jawbone.

How long had it been since Theodor had been touched, skin to skin? The Great Lord Golbez could hardly participate in normal interactions; even the most casual of friendly contact would be unavailable to a man with no friends. More… unusual routes were cut off to him too: he would never feel the press of body-to-body in bloody battle, not with that heavy armor and his immense power as a shield, and even the most money-minded among Baron's dancers would find lying beside the fearsome lord a daunting task. Somehow he couldn't imagine Cagnazzo or Scarmiglione ever giving him friendly pats on the back.

He'd wandered the wilderness as a child, and then he had come under the control of Zemus to become Golbez. Could it really be that long ago? Was it possible that the infant Cecil was the last human being Theodor had ever touched?

The thought made him uncomfortable. Even the Dragoon armor came to feel like a cage occasionally, when he was forced to go on mission after mission without a break in between. Spending years upon years trapped within that massive ebony armor was difficult to imagine.

It left him wanting to do more. They were here, alone, unarmored, and Theodor's skin was so warm against his hand. The slightest movement would leave Kain's fingers pressed against Theodor's lips. 

He was ready to do just that when Theodor opened his mouth.

“Kain,” he said. “This is… this is a poor idea.” His voice shook.

It was, absolutely it was. It was one of the least-thought-out ideas he'd had in years, and that was _saying_ something. None of that knowledge lessened the strange desire he felt.

He could tell himself it was a holdover from his days as a doting servant, that he'd confused that forced loyalty for something more genuine. The idea was easy to believe and yet rang perfectly hollow to Kain.

He knew Golbez. Kain could name every sign of pleasure or displeasure he'd ever worn, every little tilt of his armored head or flair of his cape that meant Kain would need to adjust to his shift in mood. Theodor was not _not_ Golbez—for Kain of all people to excuse a man's history so easily would be especially absurd—but neither was this the man who he'd come to depend on and fear in equal measure. 

Theodor was his own existence: he laughed, he smiled, he called Cecil _brother_ as if the very word was a wonder to him. When he was upset, he came here to watch plants grow in the moonlight. 

Kain drew his fingers back until only the barest tips of his middle and index fingers rested against Theodor's jaw. “I've made far worse,” he said, and then he leaned in and kissed Theodor.

It was only the barest touch, a soft brush of skin against skin. Kain pulled back almost instantly and watched Theodor's expression with a desperation born of equal parts fear and adrenaline.

He hadn't been pushed away immediately, and Theodor didn't look ready to strike him down where he stood with magic: both good signs. Mostly, he looked like _he'd_ been struck.

The silence stretched out just long enough to be immensely uncomfortable. Kain was unwilling to break it, even as an embarrassed flush crept up his face and he began to wish he could sink down into the mirrored tile and disappear. 

“I—I would not ask this of you,” Theodor said finally. “I am not so lowered that I would demand comfort from someone I wronged so horribly.”

 _That_ was an argument Kain was not about to rehash. Instead, he only said, “you don't need to demand anything. This is my own choice.”

Theodor laughed incredulously. It was a small, humorless sound, quickly choked off. “Your choice is to comfort your torturer.”

Kain took a deep breath. “Yes.”

An impossible-to-read expression spread across Theodor's face, hope and pain and shame all mixed together until they merged into one. “Then,” he asked quietly, “what would you have me do?”

They were both of them mind-slaves, steeped in darkness, traitors to the ones they'd promised to protect. It was not the bond Kain would have ever chosen to have with someone, but it was there nonetheless.

Kain recognized himself in Theodor, but he also recognized the hints of goodness that Theodor himself didn't seem to realize still existed within him. He wasn't so arrogant as to assume he himself held those same fragments of something worth saving, but if he did… maybe they could be useful to each other. They both knew what the darkness felt like—perhaps they could help each other search for the light.

“Come back to Earth with us,” Kain said desperately, “Come back to Baron. It will be miserable. I don't know whether any of the people there will ever be at ease with either of us, and I'm sure I will want to flee into the wilderness every single day I spend there. But I think it is the right thing to do—the _only_ right thing to do.”

“Ah.” Theodor's voice shook. “I see I am well and truly outnumbered, then.”

His whole body was tense, his expression one of deep contemplation or perhaps overwhelming fear. Kain had never been a diplomat—if this would not convince the man, he didn't know what else he could possibly say.

Finally, Theodor sighed. His arms shook as he released his death-grip on the railing. “How should I deliver the news to my brother, then?”

Sheer relief wrung a laugh out of Kain. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, trying to stifle it as best he could, only to catch Theodor smiling back at him.

“I…” he said. “Well, _personally_ , I would recommend arguing with Cecil a little more. Make sure he really feels he's earned this victory.”

“Oh?” The smile had slipped from Theodor's face, but there was still amusement in his eyes. “And I am certain your idea has nothing to do with wanting to delay our return to Earth a little longer.”

“What can I say? I'm interested in seeing what these plants look like when they bloom.” 

It was a flippant comment, but Theodor's brows knitted together in thought at it. “Hmm,” he said, “I wonder whether these would grow well on Earth. Perhaps Fusoya would allow us to take a few sprouts with us when we leave.” A touch wistfully, he added, “they are very beautiful.”

Kain could imagine the strange dark plants flourishing in within the grounds of Baron Castle, basking in the light of the double moons. It would be nice, he thought, to tend to something as uncomplicated as a flower—and perhaps he'd get another chance like this from it, an opportunity to stand in the pale light with Theodor and watch them grow.

“I hope they will,” Kain said. “I'd like that very much.”


End file.
